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Monday, June 9, 2014

This is the punch craft class I taught to beginners. I always keep a huge supply of the punched out shapes ready to use by the kids. Though the kids do try to punch out the shapes, after some time they get bored. Also some of the punches are difficult for them to punch as they may be hard. They just want to get on with their creative work. So they prefer to use the ready to use punched out shapes instead of punching them by themselves.

Here is one card made by my niece in one of my classes.

My niece also doesn't waste time in punching out the shapes. She is interested in finishing off her creation fast like all other kids. But when she feels like, she punches out some shapes and refills my box for use next time.

The card used was baby pink textured card stock. She used paper rope or paper twine for stems and punched out flowers and butterflies.

Here she used one of my templates-a circle in a square. I keep various shaped cards or other thick materials which I come across, for using them as templates. It is easier that way than making one. Before I realised, she had coloured and glued it to the card. So there was no way, I could take it back with out damaging the card. She glued some butterflies on it.

She did try to give shape to a few flowers using the tools, but instead she glued them to the rope in such a way that they looked as if shaped out by using tools.I think, she had a clear idea what to do and how to do from the beginning and finished off her work very quickly. I liked her card. Very neat and simple. What do you say?

Thursday, June 5, 2014

In one of my classes, I taught them making Book Marks. Alas, I don't have many pictures. I could only take very few, as I had to help them with their creations.

This little one is so engrossed in decorating one book mark for his little sister. His sis was 3-4 years old and kept on crying saying that she missed her mom. I had her sit on my lap through out the class so that she did not feel lonely or frightened. Only then she stopped crying. It was difficult for me to help the children in making the crafts but we all managed very well in the end with some help from the older kids.

This was one made by one of the students and decorated with smilies, stickers and punched out circles.

Here is one decorated with sketch pens and smilies. Sorry for the poor picture quality.

Wednesday, June 4, 2014

Hi there. I have been away for a long time. I was busy with cleaning of my home, organising (which is going at a snails pace) other works and recovering my health. My health suffered again. I was also a victim of sunstroke. How much it saps your energy is something one cannot imagine, unless one goes through it.

Between this and other chaos, I taught in summer camps.

Though I could not do what all I wanted to, because of my health and scorching summer heat, I enjoyed working with kids as well as adults teaching, arts and crafts.

My kids group ranged from 4 to 14 years. For my first class I was very nervous..as if entering some competition.

Working with kids was fun but very taxing. You have to control them gently and see that they don't injure themselves(But they do get messy any way :)). They are very creative and very fast. There is always, chaos, confusion and lots of talking and bantering going on. So they miss some of the instructions and I had to repeat myself many times. With the small ones, they are very adamant on doing every thing on their own but in the end ask me to create one piece for them to take home to their mom :) :)

Though I demonstrated various techniques and crafts, I gave them a free hand and was amazed to see their works which were really very nice and creative.

Alas, I could not take much pictures as I had tough time in controlling and guiding them. One more thing there was not enough light in the room for me to take pics.

Here are some:

In one of the classes I taught them making greeting cards. Here is one class where the children worked with, paper streamers, satin ribbons, stickers and card stock.

I enjoyed interacting these children as this is the first time I was teaching arts and crafts to such a group. I don't know what they learned from me :) But I learned a lot from them. But they did enjoy my classes and wanted to have more classes. Well that is a pat on my back.

All in all we all enjoyed and I am now confident that I can handle small kids too:) I didnot even notice how the time flew by in these classes.

Some more next time..

Oh I will also be posting my creations shortly. But with heavy power cuts, I am not able to log on to my blog for long periods.